Philomena: The Book

"These things did tale place" said Steve Coogan on The View. Coogan wrote the script for the Oscar-nominated film Philomena and played Martin Sixsmith the journalist who helped Philomena Lee find her son, Anthony, placed by Irish nuns for adoption in the United States in 1955.

Yes, these things did take place and they still do. The players are different: social workers and lawyers have replaced nuns as marketeers of children. Unwed mothers-to-be are no longer hidden away in convents but coerced through slick marketing campaigns to give their children away so they can have "a better life." Adoption records continue to be closed in most states. Children in foreign countries are still sold to Americans whose only qualification as parents is their ability to pay large fees. Records for these children are often non-existent or false. Unlike American adoptees who may find their birth families through the Internet and search angels, foreign-born children may never learn anything about their origins.

Lost Daughters: Strong, brave essays written from the heart

Lorraine

Lost Daughters: Writing Adoption from a Place of Empowerment and Peace, is a tough book for mothers who relinquished because whatever we may have told ourselves about the “good” reasons to let our children be adopted, these poignant and sad essays belie that with the sheer force of a body blow. I found myself with tears in my eyes as soon as I started reading, and they didn't totally dry up until long after the last page.

Taken in one gulp these writers remind us that being adopted is the singular aspect of their lives out of which everything else flows—just as it is the opposite side of the coin is for first mothers like myself: birthdays, family trees, motherhood, familiar traits, loss. 

Adoptee reunions won't erase all our sorrows--nor should they be expected to

Lorraine

Adoptees often write that they feel that they are responsible for their first mothers' reunion happiness. Some write that they do not want to be the person always in charge of another person's joy or grief. One of our regular commentors, adoptee Dpen wrote:

"Regardless of the situation...in the end the tears fall like boulders on the adopted ones. Not allowed to show our grief as it may be hurtful to one or both of our mothers...no matter how we feel, no matter where are loyalties might or might not be we are judged as not being good enough, compassionate enough, and yes, [not] good enough to anyone. We were born, adopted, lived and grow up "being adopted" and we are not able to voice OUR realities without SOMEONE trying to manipulate the story to make THEIR situation better, to MAKE us feel or do certain things to make the mothers feel better. 

Anyone wonder why we may be a little angry at times?"

In adoption, in life, there will always be tears

Lorraine

Tears. I doubt that even the most hardened people do not get through a reunion without some tears, whether they are tears of relief and joy or tears of fear and sorrow. Reunions between mother and child touch our deepest feelings, our strongest emotions. I honestly do not remember if I cried when I read the letter informing me that the Searcher, whoever he or she was, had located my daughter already from the clues I left in Birthmark--all I had to do was ask and pay the fee. I asked, and now I had her name, her other parents' names and whereabouts. She was found. What I remember is the enormous relief of the exact moment I read that letter. I was sitting at my kitchen table. Imagine walking on a tight wire for 15 years, holding yourself up and in balance, praying you don't wobble this way or that and fall off, and then learning that suddenly, in the nanosecond it takes for an idea to be realized in the brain, you are able to step off. That is what I felt. 

Fathers: Are they necessary?

Jane

The adoption industry uses fathers--or the absence of them--as a wedge to convince mothers to give up their babies. Fathers who stick around, create a problem for the industry. The industry characterizes them as an obstacle to the best interests of a child. The adoption industry's message to single pregnant women: your baby needs a father, but not the bum who got you pregnant.

LOSING A MOTHER TO GAIN A FATHER
"A child needs a mother...and a father." I'm sure I heard these words more than once in a TV show, spoken by an all-knowing social worker (or parent, teacher, clergyman) to a scared single woman who wanted to keep her baby: The words repeated endlessly in my mind when I was faced with having a child without a husband.

16 and Pregnant, I'm Having Their Baby: Does TV influence reality?

From I'm Having Their Baby

I have been trying to think of what to say about the news that came out yesterday about how the MTV show, 16 and Pregnant, has led to a decline in teenage pregnancy in areas where teenagers were watching more MTV programming--not only 16 and Pregnant--than in areas where they did not.

The cautionary tale of diapers and derailed dreams that 16 and Pregnant features appears to have turned teen girls watching off from having a baby. The teenage birth rate in areas where

Why should adoptees' original birth certificates be unsealed? A first mother's perspective

Lorraine

At the end of the month, the Health Committee of the New York State Assembly will be holding a hearing on proposed legislation that would give adoptees the right to their original birth certificates. Along with other members of Unsealed Initiative, I will be testifying.

The below is a working draft, and I would appreciate comments. 

“If I had known that someday I could meet my daughter it would have been so much easier to sign those papers. My social worker and I went over this point again and again and again. Never, never, could I see her, not ever, time heals all wounds, she would say. It does not heal this one….”

Brain-dead but forced to stay 'alive'

Lorraine

In Texas, a brain-dead woman is being kept alive, against her wishes, merely to be an incubator for a 20-week old fetus that she will never hold. Marlise Munoz was brain-dead after collapsing on her kitchen floor from what appeared to be a blood clot in her lungs more than a month ago, 14 weeks into her pregnancy. But as her husband and parents prepared to say good-bye, doctors told them that they were not going to comply with their wishes--and apparently the wishes of Malise herself--because of state law that prohibits cutting off medical support to a pregnant woman.

No matter what.

Exactly what are 'adoption records' and who can access them?

Jane

"How can I get a copy of the consent they say I signed?" asks a reader. Another inquiries: "If a child is born in one state which has not opened its records but adopted in an open records state, can the child see his original birth certificate?"

Here's a run through of the records created during an adoption and who can see them.

If LDS Family Services ends adoption, it won't be soon enough

Lorraine

UPDATE BELOW
As we described yet another LDS Family Services adoption scam yesterday, one designed to cut out the natural father, it is merely one more in a long link of such fraudulent adoptions that the state laws were designed, if not to condone, to promote. In Utah the laws make it difficult--if not impossible--for a father to raise his child if the mother chooses adoption. It is apparent that social workers, LDS (Latter-Day Saints) Family Services, an organization with dozens of adoption agencies world wide, but most particularly in Utah, the seat of the Mormon religion, are not interested in ethical adoptions, but speedy ones instead.

At last: LDS Family Services and fellow travelers sued in adoption scam

Jake Strickland, 26, in what was to be his son's nursery (Salt Lake Tribune)

Utah's anti-birth father practices and laws are the target of a lawsuit claiming $130 million in damages to an Arizona man who says he was tricked out of raising his son by the boy's mother, adoption attorneys and LDS Family Services. 

We say: Here we go again. Utah has the most anti-father and pro-adoption laws in the country, designed to whisk children away from biological parents as soon as possible, and specifically, to prevent birth fathers from being able to raise their children. 

A Joyous New Year---Some good news in adoption reform

I'm feeling really upbeat today, the last day of 2013. It's my 45th wedding anniversary, 45 years with a wonderful patient, kind man. We may just go out for Chinese tonight as we did when our three daughters were young and we had little time or money. Last night we and a couple of friends had a great dinner and went to a fantastic concert by the Oregon Symphony. It culminated with Beethoven's Ninth and its rousing finale Ode to Joy.

I feel joyous and optimistic for 2014: my family is doing well, I've got great friends, and there's progress on adoption reform.

Whatever happened to Carlina White?

Father, daughter and mother reunited 

Remember Carlina White? The girl who was abducted in 1987 from a New York City hospital and raised by another woman as her own in Connecticut? After "Nejdra Nance"--the name she grew up with--was pregnant herself at sixteen, she needed her birth certificate to get aid for pre-natal care, but her mother was elusive about it. Netty--the name she went by--eventually found a paper she thought was her birth certificate, but it turned out to be false. She knew something was wrong but when Netty confronted Ann Pettway, the woman who raised her, Pettway told her that her mother was a crack addict who deserted her and never came back. It was a lie, a lie that would take years to unravel.

Capobiancos register at Target for new adopted baby

Lorraine

UPDATE (Nov. 28, 2017)
Apparently Matt and Melanie Capobianco did adopt another child, a daughter named Stella, as I originally surmised in this 2013 post, soon after Veronica Brown was taken from her natural father by court order. An obituary for Melanie's mother lists among her descendants (which they are actually not) the two children of Melanie as Veronica and Stella. The obit says this:

Dr. Duncan is survived by her daughter, Melanie Duncan and her husband, Matthew Capobianco of Charleston, SC; her granddaughters, Veronica and Stella Capobianco; her brother Joseph B. Fabin Jr. and his wife Lisa Fabin and her nephew Timothy Fabin all of Minerva, N.Y. 

Just a news brief today: Matt and Melanie Capobianco have apparently adopted a second child, and have registered for gifts at Target. To those who do not know, the Capobiancos of Charleston, South Carolina prevailed in their battle to remove four-year-old Veronica Brown from the home of Dusten Brown, her biological father--where she was thriving--at the end of September. Regarding the adoption of a second child--from where I do not know--I really have no words to add, and look for our reader's reaction. I am sick at heart.--lorraine

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From FMF

Dusten Brown: A Father's final words to his daughter
Baby Veronica: How Dusten Brown could prevail in battle over his daughter
Dusten Brown continues to fight for his daughter; the Capobiancos dig in deeper
Adoptive father John Roberts: Not impartial in the Baby Veronica case
Supreme Court rules against Indian father, limits Indian Child Welfare Act

OBIT

Dr. Joann Frances Fabin Duncan

The sisterhood of first mother loss at the holiday

Sent by my alternate universe daughter 

We had a Christmas lunch at our house yesterday--friends came by for Champagne punch and sustenance. Two guys my husband made sure to introduce to each other were both Vietnam vets. One was a journalist who was captured and briefly imprisoned; the other was a Naval officer who had spent two years in combat. After my husband made the introduction, they spent a long time talking. Later my husband said: It's the most intense experience of their lives--no one who hasn't been through it can quite understand. My husband was in the Army between conflicts, and after ROTC, only spent six months on active duty. But he understood immediately why these two men would bond.

Is giving up a child for adoption a 'loving' decision?

Jane

"Adoption is a courageous and loving decision" touts the Children's Home Society of Florida. We've heard this a zillion times although in my day it was often phrased as "think of your child, not yourself." Signing the papers on a rainy day a week before Christmas in San Francisco, and giving an adoption agency the power to select a family for my daughter Rebecca was not a courageous and loving decision. In many ways it was not a decision at all. I simply did what white middle-class singe mothers of (I hope) a bygone era did--acquiesced to social mores trumpeted in advice columns, soap operas, pulpits, and teen magazines.

How the adoption industry convinces women they aren't 'ready to parent'

Jane

Recent first mothers often explain they gave up their babies because "I was not ready to parent," adopting the language which the adoption industry prefers to the more homey "nurture a child." "To parent" gives child rearing a kind of mystical quality beyond the skills of single mothers-to-be..

Adoption practitioners typically use close-ended questions--the kind answered "yes" or "no" on their websites and in their literature to create doubt and nudge mothers-to-be into thinking they are not ready to be mothers. American Adoptions, for example, encourages pregnant women to ask themselves: "Am I ready to be a parent? This the most important question of all....If you have aspirations to attend college, pursue a career, or simply just want to maintain your current lifestyle, you may find that you aren't ready to raise a child, when another family out there is ready to adopt and give a child the greatest life imaginable."

Good news on bills in Ohio and Pennsylvania; Tina talks of the 'blood' connection on Survivor

Tina on left, daughter Katie on right 

UPDATED ON 12/16/13

"Jeff, there is something about my relationship to Katie, my daughter because I'm adopted. And I don't have those connections in my life, not until I had her had I felt a real connection in my life. It's a pure, unadulterated, pure love I have for her." --Tina Wesson, last night on Survivor.

When these pronouncements come out of the blue in places you don't expect them, they are great teaching moments for the public, a public that increasingly believes that adoption is simple and good and doesn't leave a great many adoptees with a hole in their hearts.

The adoptee dilemma: Navigating between opposing parents

Lorraine

Secrets and lies, as well as the push-and-pull between natural and adoptive parents--with the child caught in the middle--are joined-at-the-script themes being explored weekly on Nashville, the TV nighttime drama about the music scene in that city. Maddie, the young teen at the heart of this story line, is having a difficult time negotiating between two fathers: the man who raised her, Teddy, the outwardly upstanding individual; and the man who is her biological parent, Deacon, the recovering addict, former love and lead guitar player to her famous country-singer mother, Rayna. Problem Number One.

The character Maddie is an adolescent when her parents divorce and she learns her life is not what it seems--and both her mother and the man she married when she was pregnant with Deacon's baby conspired to keep her true parentage a secret--forever. From her. Problem Number Two.

Philomena: A forced adoption, a lifetime quest, a longing that never waned

The book, the true story

Most of you already know the bare bones of the story of the film Philomena: Irish teen becomes pregnant, ends up in one of the horrid Magdalene laundries, her son is forcibly adopted when he is three by rich Americans, and a half century later his mother--Philomena Lee in real life--wants to find him and comes to Washington with a journalist who is writing her story, his newspaper paying the bills.

I made sure I had plenty of tissues with me but in fact, only needed one. True there is sadness aplenty, but served up with levity and even a few comedic moments to relax the tension. Judi Dench, as Philomena, gives a masterful, believable performance as she talks about what happened to her, seen in flashbacks, and in how she portrays the woman dealing with reality today. She says she wonders if her son ever thought about her, because she thought about him every single day. You got that right, I was thinking. Every adoptee who doesn't already know the answer to that should see this film.